WE AWOKE IN THE MORNING WITH THE BED a disaster area, our clothes and underwear torn and strewn about the room, our smells all over one another. She showered and quickly dressed and left, and neither one of us spoke a word as she did so. I showered in my turn, and when I’d dressed I found Inspector Bonnot sitting in the living room.
“I hope I didn’t frighten you,” he said.
“Not at all,” I replied, the very embodiment of aplomb.
“I ran into Mme. Guiteau as she was leaving. She graciously let me in.”
“I see.”
“You should have told me from the start that you were fucking her.”
“I was protecting her reputation.”
He chuckled. “Such as it is. Well, I knew anyway; so did all the neighbors. So, presumably, did Guiteau himself.”
“He never indicated any such thing to me.”
“I suppose not.”
The inspector stood, moved to the window, and opened it up. “Do you mind if I smoke?”
“Go ahead. It’s not my apartment, of course.”
“No, of course.” With great deliberation he stuffed and lit a pipe and began puffing lungfuls of smoke out the window and into the cool Parisian air. “I hear stories about you.”
“What kind of stories?”
“All kinds. Mostly because people notice you. They tend to remember when the subject of an anecdote is a well-known personality. For example, there was a fight outside the nightclub downstairs, shortly after you moved in. Remember?”
“Vaguely.”
“Vaguely? You gave the boy a concussion.”
“He followed me into the building’s lobby and attacked me.”
“That’s not the way he tells it. Still, when he checked into the hospital later no one believed his story that he’d been beaten up by none other than Dr. Crandall Taylor.”
“One of the advantages of celebrity, I suppose.”
“Yes, I suppose.” He took a deep drag, and the smell of tobacco was quite comforting, bringing back memories of my grandfather and his brother, both smokers who went to early graves. “And of course we already know that when Bruno Guiteau tried to jump you, you gave him a very thorough beat-down in return.”
“As you point out, he did jump me.”
“Quite so, and he bears you no particular ill-will for it.” Holding the pipe in the vicinity of the window, he thumbed through a stack of reports. “And there’s this. A rather savage attack on a group of marginal young people down by the Seine. Now this, too, appears to have been a case of self-defense, but what’s interesting is that these kids swore that you were the one who fought them so savagely. Naturally at the time no one took it seriously.”
“Seems everyone who checked into a hospital that week was blaming me for their injuries.”
He laughed. “Just so, just so. I took the liberty of looking into your background.”
“You should have called my press agent, she’d have sent you the whole package.”
“Yes, quite. I did go through a lot of the entertainment press. The tabloids, the TV magazines, that sort of thing. But I didn’t find much of use beyond your latest triumph on the stage. Congratulations, by the way. I understand your Tartuffe was quite well received in Chicago.”
“Thank you. I wish you could have seen it.”
“Where I struck gold was when I contacted the United States Embassy and requested your military records.”
I was a bit taken aback. “They handed them over as quickly as that?”
“Not so quickly. I’ve been working on this whole business since the day you were attacked. As I said, the divisionnaire . . .”
“Yes, his wife’s a big fan.”
“And what I expected to find was the usual military record for an artist. Training films, things of that nature. But you were a Green Beret, my friend.”
“I find it hard to believe that you got access to my military records in any legitimate manner that quickly.”
“Legitimacy is a flexible concept, monsieur, when it comes to police work and diplomacy. Let’s say that monsieur le divisionnaire’s concern for your well-being opened certain doors at the Quai d’Orsay, which in turn facilitated my queries via your Department of State.”
“I see.”
“It’s an interesting record. Nothing but praise from your superiors, the highest possible references from your superior officers, and then—quite suddenly—a less than honorable discharge. No court martial, either. Seems they gave you a choice and you took the lesser of two evils.”
“I had no desire to spend the remainder of my hitch in military prison.”
“Quite understandable. And here you’ve managed to stay out of trouble since.”
“A lesson learned, Inspector. My temper cost me my military career.”
“And yet you’ve managed to parlay that loss into great success in another career, one that millions dream of.”
“I have no complaints.”
Having finished his bowlful, he tapped the ashes out onto the Boulevard St. Germain below. “Well, sir, I’ll bother you no more today. I’ll be in touch, and naturally, if anything happens out of the ordinary . . .”
“Naturally.”
• • •
Disillusioned though I was at the ease with which my government gave away my supposedly inviolate secrets, there was nothing in my military record that pointed to me as Claude Guiteau’s killer, and I was confident that if Inspector Bonnot had seen through me as a man capable of violence, it wasn’t necessarily a predictable leap to considering me an assassin.
• • •
I went to see a movie that afternoon, an American zombie movie in which a friend of mine played the key role of the town doctor. He had a couple of nice scenes after he’d turned into one of the undead, and I had a hearty laugh when he took a large bite out of the shoulder of a young woman dressed as a police officer. When it was over I saw I’d had a couple of text messages from Fred, urging me to call him back as soon as possible.
With some trepidation I returned his call, only to find that he’d fucked Annick three times the night before. He was beside himself with joy, and I returned to the apartment rather pleased with my efforts as a matchmaker. I’d been friends with Fred for only a few weeks now, but his life as a depressive shut-in was a thing of the past.
I had dinner with Ginny at a seafood restaurant at the Place de l’Odéon. She was mad that the hotel had quashed her efforts to get the story of her ex-husband and stalker into the papers.
“Do you know what that kind of shit is worth in terms of Internet traffic?” she asked me between bites of sole meunière. “Never mind the fact that there was a cross-dresser aspect to it, which just makes it kinkier. But no, the hotel’s precious reputation is at stake, so they keep it quiet. And when I pointed out to them that I stood to lose money on the proposition, you know what they had the balls to do?”
“Offer you a settlement?” I guessed.
“Damn right!”
“I hope you took it.”
“Damn right I did. Shit, though, I got to get some publicity out of this stalking business.”
“So you think he broke in to steal your underwear?”
“No, that’s just an occasional thing when he gets high. Mostly he’s into all kinds of kinky shit, all over the place: nipple torture, electric shocks, breath play, adult diapers, you name it. And when I met him he was kind of a missionary-position type of guy, you know? I mean, I understand why he’s upset about us breaking up. I ruined him for regular women.”
“I can certainly understand that.”
“I fucking wish we could get him to do it again, just away from that tight-assed fucking hotel this time.”
I thought it over. “How would you like to attend a memorial service with me tomorrow?”
She almost had a bite of sole in her mouth, and she held it there suspended before her lips in a tentative state of delighted disbelief. “Babe, am I to understand that you are asking me out on a date to somebody’s funeral?”
“If you want to call it that, yes.”
She put the forkful of fish down and fell back laughing. “You are a class act.”
“So I guess that’s a yes?”
“Fuck, yeah. There going to be food?”
“Yeah, it’s kind of a wake. Just one thing,” I said. “If you wanted to let David know about it, how would you do that?”
“Ooohhh.” She nodded. “I can think of ways.”
“Good. Because the press is going to be there, and I can pretty much guarantee there’ll be cops as well.”